JOHN Roland is celebrating 30 years at WNYW/Ch.5 — no mean feat for an anchor in the country’s most demanding, scrutinized TV market.

But Roland can’t readily explain the secret to his remarkable success — which seems to come so easily to the affable anchor of Ch.5’s top-rated 10 p.m. newscast.

“I think if I really knew the answer to that, I’d bottle it,” Roland says. “I’ve been extremely fortunate to have had terrific news directors and general managers.

“Management at Ch.5 has always been the best,” he says. “And we’ve had tremendous involvement with the community. When you add that and the effort that’s gone into making the 10 p.m. news what it’s been for so many years … people just trust and believe in us.”

Roland’s Ch.5 career actually began on Dec. 26, 1969, when he joined what was then WNEW/Ch.5 as a reporter after a stint with NBC in Los Angeles.

It was while he was at NBC that Roland met his mentor, Chet Huntley — half of NBC’s pioneering Huntley-Brinkley evening news team (“Goodnight, Chet.” “Goodnight, David.”).

“Chet was fabulous,” Roland says. “I knew him personally. I got to know him when he came back to L.A. to visit. He was a terrific writer, and to me writing is very important in this business and is, to some extent, overlooked.

“I’ve always taken pride in my writing,” Roland says. “A lot of people say to me, ‘When we listen to you, it’s like you’re talking to us, not down to us.’ And part of that has to do with the writing.

“I continue to write a lot of my material, and I edit almost everything,” he says. “I don’t go in at 9 [p.m.] and pick up the script — there are people in our business who do that, but you have to be involved in the program. Otherwise, people at home know.”

Roland began co-anchoring Ch.5’s weekend newscast about a year after arriving at the station and moved into the 10 p.m. slot shortly thereafter.

Through the years, he’s worked with anchors who’ve become New York staples — from Bill Jorgensen to Bill McCreary to Cora Ann Mihalik (now at Ch.9) to current co-anchor Rosanna Scotto.

“Bill [McCreary] and I worked together for 15 years, and we got to be very close,” he says. “We still keep in touch and see each other and have a great deal of affection for each other.

“Cora Ann was terrific in her own way and, of course, there’s something very special about Rosanna,” he says. “She’s a terrific mom and works very hard between keeping an eye on her family and the sheer amount of hours she puts in here.”

Through the years, Roland’s trademark has become the lighthearted stories he tells at the end of every newscast.

“I started doing that after all the bad news that we often dish out,” he says. “Hopefully, people will go off to sleep with a little better feeling than if they’re constantly thinking about the top stories.”